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Rep. Peter King: Al-Qaida Propagandist Had Long Island Connection

Congressman Peter King says an al-Qaida operative who went to school in our area but was killed in Yemen last week was “extremely dangerous.”

Samir Khan, 25, attended the W.T. Clarke High School in East Meadow, Long Island.

In the high school’s 2003 yearbook, Khan wrote “If you give Satan an inch, he will be a ruler.”

He subsequently moved to North Carolina and then on to Yemen.

“Obviously, the U.S. was his Satan. He was obviously very radical,” King told WCBS 880 reporter Sophia Hall. “By the time he got out of high school, that was afterSeptember 11th. The magazine he put out every month was monitored very, very carefully by the FBI and the CIA and was considered extremely dangerous and extremely threatening to the United States.”

“A young man who had all the benefits of suburban life, but yet, whatever happened to him to radicalize him, he was a terrorist living in our midst,” said King.

King says federal authorities are aware that Khan was in contact with two other people on Long Island who were persons of interest in other terror investigations.

Khan was killed last week in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen. He was traveling with American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.